


Just a Bit Different

by Anonymous



Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-18
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-09-09 10:48:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,853
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8887945
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [XenomorphLiebe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/XenomorphLiebe/gifts).



Alex Reagan had never liked cabs. They were a little uncomfortable at best and downright disgusting at absolute worst, and yet the life of an investigative journalist--even one who only works for "radio on the Internet" these days--demands the use of quite a few. And these days, those cab rides seem to include the presence of one Richard Strand more often than not.

At that particular moment, in fact, he was sitting beside her (if "beside" was still accurate when he was actually seated as far away as possible within the confined space). For the most part, they ignored each other; it had been a long day of interviews, and unless Alex was misinterpreting those politely-covered yawns that kept escaping him, they were both more than ready to pass out.

Outside the cab, night had long since settled over the city, and the pitch-black December sky hung high above the bright lights of the buildings. Her vision had never been the best in the dark, so each little light bulb was just a bit fuzzy to her. It was even more beautiful that way, she thought; this time of year, she could almost pretend they were Christmas ornaments, specifically hung to make the city feel more festive.

The deep chill of winter lurked just outside the cab, an icy glow seeming to radiate off the thin glass of the window only inches from Alex's face, and she shivered as her breath fogged her view. Even after all her time spent in the Pacific Northwest, she had still never gotten used to the cold. Alex glanced over at Strand, seated so far from her across the cab. They were each pressed against their respective windows, watching the city race by in spite of the chilly air, and yet he didn't seem anywhere near as bothered by it as she was. Then again, he never seemed particularly bothered by anything, and perhaps she shouldn't have been surprised; even the black tapes had never seemed to shake him.

They sure shook her, though. Everything about them--just the possibility that any part of their nightmarish, supernatural mystery might be true--terrified her. Tall Paul, the exorcisms, the Unsound... it all scared the shit out of her, when she thought about it in a certain light. And sometimes she couldn't stop herself; sometimes she couldn't help but fear that it was all real, connected, and every bit as dangerous as it seemed.

But Strand, of course, didn't believe that, and so why would he be scared?

Through the window, Alex watched as the cab pulled over and slowed to a halt at their hotel. She was fairly sure she recognized the place, actually, and might have stayed at it once or twice in the past... but then again, perhaps these places all looked so much alike that she couldn't tell the difference.

She surveyed the building for a moment, wondering idly if she was right to think she'd been there before, and then her focus shifted. Quite suddenly, she caught sight of her reflection in the car window, and for a moment, she didn't seem to be able to tear her gaze away. She looked horrible--well, not _horrible_ , but quite unlike herself, at the very least; she looked so solemn, even a bit more haggard than normal, and if she were anyone but herself, she would've thought that face belonged to a woman who bore the weight of the world on her shoulders.

But then Strand cleared his throat from behind her, and Alex's trance was broken. He was much closer than earlier, obviously eager to get out of the vaguely cigarette-scented car, and she hurriedly opened the door, flustered at having been caught paying so little attention to reality.

The hard soles of Alex's flats, too thin for this weather and yet too cute to set aside until spring, clicked against the near-frozen sidewalk as she and Strand hustled into the building. She shivered all the way, winter engulfing her in its cold embrace no matter her protests, and she couldn't have been more relieved when they were finally inside the warm lobby of the hotel. It had only been a few seconds' distance out there in the freezing night, but even that had felt like an eternity.

"I reserved us each a room," Strand's deep voice broke the relative silence of the lobby. Though there were enough people present for there to be a short line at the desk, no one else was more than whispering; it seemed everyone was exhausted tonight.

"You did?" she asked, glancing at him in surprise. Since when did Strand make her travel arrangements instead of PNWS staff?

"My treat," he said, and he left it at that as they joined the back of the short line.

If she hadn't been struggling to keep her eyes open already, Alex might've pressed the issue. As it was, though, she didn't really care; if Strand wanted to pay for her hotel room, that was his business. She deserved it, she figured; it might as well be compensation for all the publicity he was getting for his work, courtesy of the podcast. (How much money had they made for him since the show first aired? she wondered vaguely, and then the thought was gone as quickly as it had come.)

When they finally stepped up to the clerk, Alex was nearly asleep on her feet and paying so little attention that she could hardly even hear Strand and the clerk exchanging niceties. She couldn't wait to get upstairs into her room, get out of her ice-cold and slightly rain-damp clothes, and crawl beneath the covers; she didn't even care that it was a hotel bed at this point.

It was only when Strand's voice turned sharp that he caught Alex's attention. "Look again. Richard Strand."

"I'm sorry, sir, but the only Richard Strand reservation we have is for one two-bed room, not two one-bed rooms. Are you sure you made your reservation here?"

"Of course I made it here." Strand's voice was a tense mix of frustration and condescension, and the woman behind the counter was quickly losing her smile. "How many Richard Strands do you think there are trying to make reservations here tonight?"

"Maybe you misspoke when you reserved it, then?"

His expression was nearly as cold as the air outside. "Maybe the person I spoke to misheard. My reservation was supposed to be for two rooms."

"I'm afraid we don't have two rooms open tonight," the woman said, looking downright anxious now, though her voice still clung to its manufactured politeness.

"Then we'll go somewhere else," Strand said sharply, and Alex's eyes fluttered shut once again.

"It's late," she interrupted quietly, her voice sounding as dead-tired as she felt. "I'm exhausted. If it's just for one night, it's not a big deal."

He looked surprised as he turned to her, his lips pursing into a thin, tense line. "Are you sure? We could just go somewhere else."

"If this place is full," she told him, "I wouldn't be surprised if everywhere else is just as bad. I don't know what the occasion is--maybe it's just the start of the holiday rush--but I think we should just be grateful at this point that we've got two separate beds."

Strand hesitated for what seemed like so long that Alex thought she might as well just go to sleep in the lobby, before finally nodding. "If you're sure."

Alex beamed, the heavy overnight bag dangling from her shoulder seeming to grow lighter from relief as she started toward the elevator.

* * *

Alex stepped into her room--their room--with a heavier heart than earlier. She was tired, almost too tired at this point to spare a single thought to anything but sleep, and yet worried had begun to creep into the back of her mind. Did she really want to share a room with _Strand_? Was that really a good idea?

But it was certainly too late to worry about it now. As he gravitated toward the bed near the door, Alex walked past him to fling her bag onto the second of the twin-sized mattresses, and her fingers fumbled with the zipper for a few seconds before she got it open.

"You want the bathroom first?" he asked her.

"Uh, no, it's fine."

"Great." A few quick strides, and he was gone. There was a solid wooden door between them, and Alex pulled out her pajamas with a sigh. _Good God, I'm a dork._

She listened to the sink running, waiting patiently while Strand changed, brushed his teeth, and then apparently used the toilet, if the flush was any indication. And then the sink turned off, and the doorknob turned, and she quickly stuffed her pj’s back into her bag.

Strand stepped out of the bathroom without so much as a hint of awkwardness, but Alex practically burned with it when he did. He had changed, his discarded clothes now draped over one of his bare arms as his shoes dangled from his fingers, and the bare expanse of his torso gave her a shiver.

(A cold shiver, of course, she told herself. A sympathetic, you-must-be-freezing shiver.)

"All yours," he said, not even sparing a glance in her direction, and Alex walked stiffly past him, wondering how in the hell he could be so utterly unflappable all the time. If _she_ had come out shirtless, she was willing to bet, he wouldn't have shown any more interest in it than to offer a snarky comment or two.

Not that she was interested.

And, hell, even if she was? Didn't matter. This might be shaping up to look like the get-together scene in a discount romance novel, but that definitely wasn't about to happen. She wasn't about to get sexy with Strand--she wasn't about to get sexy at all. Not with what she planned to sleep in tonight.

When she stepped out of the bathroom, hair and teeth brushed, bladder empty, and pajamas in place, she kind of hoped that maybe Strand wouldn't notice. Maybe he'd already be asleep, even... But, no, she never seemed to have quite that much luck.

"What are you wearing?" came the inevitable question, spoken with a hint of suppressed laughter in the man's voice.

"Uh." Alex glanced down. "My Yummy Sushi pajamas."

At that, he did let out a bit of a scoff. "Your what?"

"They're... Buffy merch. You know, the show?"

"I'm familiar." Yes, that was a definite smile on his lips. "It just seems like an odd choice for a grown woman."

Alex shrugged. This actually wasn't going as badly as she'd feared, though she wasn't entirely sure what she'd thought was going to happen. "If they're good enough for Buffy, they're good enough for me."

"So you're a fan, then?" he asked, turning his back on her once more as he turned down his covers and started unpacking a few personal items--a book, a little box of tissues, a pill box of some kind--onto their shared nightstand. "I thought you didn't like demons?"

"Buffy's demons are just for fun. You can always be sure the Scoobies are going to defeat them. It's the type of demons that give me nightmares. Figuratively speaking."

He glanced up at her again, a brow raised. "Those movies are horrible."

"Well, I enjoyed them."

"Different strokes, I guess," he said, and he nodded toward their lamp. "Can I turn this off?"

"Knock yourself out."

The lamp light went out, and Alex watched him walk toward the main light switch by the door. "Goodnight," he said.

The lights above her head went out, plunging her into darkness. She couldn't see him anymore, her eyes slow to adjust, but she could hear his footsteps shuffling toward her. "Goodnight."

The only sound in the room was covers rustling, and Alex crawled into bed a moment later.

A strange night to end a strange day.

* * *

Alex's eyes flicked open in the darkness, and she stared at the ceiling. There was a cold sweat all over her body, leaving her uncomfortable beneath the unfamiliar blankets on the bed. Something felt off, just a vague sense of unease. Had she just woken from a nightmare, she wondered? She couldn't remember if she'd dreamed.

She shook away the thought. That didn't matter; what mattered right now was her bladder. She felt like she was about to burst, and she cast a wary glance over at Strand's bed before she dared to creep out of her own. He was still fast asleep, and she slid out from beneath the covers as silently as possible before tiptoeing toward the bathroom. She held the doorknob carefully as she shut the door, only the faintest thunk of the wood against its frame giving away her movement, and she turned on the bathroom light only after she was shut inside. She probably didn't need to be quite so careful not to wake him, and he might even be too deep a sleeper to notice her getting up in the first place. But she hated the thought of giving him a reason to regret taking this room; she certainly didn't expect this to ever happen again, but there was still a certain part of her that didn't want to be known as 'the woman too annoying to share a room with'.

Then again, there wasn't much merit in being 'the woman who over-thinks everything', either.

 _Whatever_ , Alex thought as she flushed the toilet and turned toward the sink. Hot water poured over her hands, and she scrubbed them carefully; she hated public bathrooms, after all, and this was barely a step above. Still looking down, she grabbed the hand towel from the little rack on the wall, dried her hands, and finally lifted her gaze to the mirror.

The woman staring back at her was not herself, and Alex didn't recognize the face for a moment. Nothing seemed to make sense about it; it looked like a face and yet _not_ a face, and in her exhaustion, she couldn't seem to make heads or tails of it.

And then reality crashed into her all at once--in the back of her mind, she had the vague awareness of a scream. Someone, somewhere was screaming, but she didn't care about that right now; she cared about the face in the mirror, because it _was_ hers after all.

And it was upside down.

The door to the bathroom opened like thunder, and as Strand rushed into the room, Alex realized that her back was against the wall with her hands clasped over her mouth--over the place where she was _sure_ her mouth was--and she tore her gaze from her reflection.

"What happened?" Strand demanded, voice deep and deadly serious, and one of his hands closed around each of her upper arms as he stole her attention from the mirror. "Why did you scream?"

"My--my face!" she blurted, and he glanced, seemingly unconsciously, toward the mirror. "It was... upside down."

He looked solemn when he turned back to her. "Alex."

"No, don't," she said quickly, shaking herself free of his hands. "I know what I saw."

She brushed past him, slipping out of the bathroom on trembling legs as she tried to reason with herself. She hadn't really seen that, had she? That wasn't even _possible_. Maybe...? Could it really just be that the black tapes were getting to her?

"It's the middle of the night," Strand said, his voice surprisingly gentle. He followed right behind her, a sympathetic look on her face far from any she'd seen there before. "It was just hynagogia. You're exhausted, and you were falling back asleep. It was just a hallucination, like a waking dream."

Alex shook her head, sinking down onto the bed. "It looked so real."

"Hallucinations are like that. And dreams." To her surprise, he sat down beside her, and a hand reached out to fall upon her shoulder. "I think this investigation might be getting to you."

Somehow, it actually sounded _less_ convincing coming from him. (Perhaps she was simply too used to questioning his skepticism.) "It looked _so_ real," she repeated. "And completely terrifying."

He nodded, and then the hand that was on her shoulder moved, and--and maybe she was still hallucinating, because _what?_ \--he pulled her into a side-hug, her shoulder flush against him as his arm encircled her tightly. "I can imagine. But it wasn't real. Dealing with these cases can give you nightmares, believe me, but it's not real. None of it's real."

Drowsiness seeped back into her muscles along with her relief, and Alex sagged into his embrace, exhausted again. "Wish I felt as sure as you do."

He said something else, something spoken in a soft, reassuring tone she didn't at all associate with Dr. Richard Strand, but Alex couldn't hear the words. Her eyes had already fluttered shut, and she drifted quietly back into sleep.

Everything, she knew, would look just a bit different in the morning.


End file.
